Simsek Strikes

Carried Away: My First Float Tank Experience

I don’t remember where or exactly what year it was when I first saw the movie “Altered States” and learned about their existence, but in spite of the crazy things that the sensory deprivation tank triggered in the movie, I was hooked on the idea of trying one.  I knew that I would love to float, nearly weightless, in super-salinated, body-temperature water, in the dark, losing all sense of where my body ended and the water began. It was a feeling I'd cultivated in lucid dreams, and one I'd wanted to experience in real life, too.

So this year, when Paulo got a gift certificate for an hour in a local float tank for my birthday, I was beyond excited.  Now, of course, they’re called “float tanks” and from what I’ve been reading they’re all the rage again.  Athletes are using them to treat fatigue and muscle tension, therapists recommending them for patients with PTSD and anxiety, and people flocking to them to relax and unwind.  I couldn’t wait.

There’s only one float pod at the facility I visited, so I had to wait a couple of minutes when I first arrived for the previous guest to finish their shower and the attendant to ready the room again.  He came out looking pink, happy, and a little stoned.  It was his first time, too, and he said it had taken him half the time to learn not to move and shift position because it made the water move, but after that he was golden.

Then it was my turn.  They led me into a lovely private room containing the float pod (which looks like a giant white clam shell with a glowing blue interior), a shower stall, a seat, towels, earplugs and all the essentials. They recommended that I put the earplugs in even before I take my initial shower (you shower before and after floating) so that I didn’t block water inside my ears, and told me that the room lights were on a motion sensor and would turn off a few minutes after I closed the pod.  I had the option of listening to music or silence (I chose silence) and they said that the water jets would turn on at the end of my hour to let me know my time was up.

When I first climbed in I had to laugh at myself slipping down repeatedly because I was so buoyant that it was almost hard to *sit* in the tank long enough to reach up and pull the lid down—my body just wanted to float up!  The interior of the pod was surprisingly spacious, with the lid being low enough that I could reach up to it sitting, but not so low that it felt close or tight.  I was able to lie on my back with my arms and legs outstretched and only occasionally float into one side or another.

The water was wonderfully warm – both the air and water temperature inside are engineered to match body temperature—and they aren’t kidding about the buoyancy.  The top half of my body floated above the surface at all times.  At first, the water was still moving slightly from the jets (which turn off when you close the lid) and it gave me the slightest sensation of spinning, which wasn’t optimal.  I opened my eyes several times to orient myself (I was not, in fact, spinning) and to try to stop the sense of movement.  But before long, the motion sensation stopped, and all I could feel was the slight line of surface tension where the top of the water gave way to air, and the gentle, even pressure of the water supporting me.

Next, as the sensory outlines of my limbs got somewhat fuzzy, I became aware of the tension in my neck.  Without any other sensations to distract me, I became increasingly aware of it.  For a few minutes, this worried me: what if I couldn’t get comfortable on my back? Was this going to make my neck worse, or ruin my float? But then I discovered that by tilting my head back slightly more all the tension relaxed, and I could go back to melting.

After that, the whole experience gets fuzzy.  Time lost meaning as my mind started to drift between different states of awareness.  There were times that felt meditative –where there was a smooth, silky grey calmness behind my eyes and I was only aware of my breathing, and sometimes not even that.  Sometimes I slipped into dreams, or my thoughts skipped around on their own.  All sense of my bodily presence went out of focus, deeply relaxed and comfortable, almost melted.

There were, however, disruptions to my calm.  I relaxed so deeply that I snored once, and woke myself.  I also discovered that  when I lie on my back I am still susceptible to an assortment of nap jerks and twitches, which was unfortunate.  They weren’t uncomfortable, but of course they’d cause motion, some sensation, and they’d bring me back up to a lighter state of consciousness.  Apparently, I have more twitches in my left arm and hand, and significantly less on the right arm and leg.  I definitely wonder what state I might have reached without the twitches!

After one particularly forceful twitch I woke myself more than usual and wondered how long it had been.  I wondered if the underwater blue light had ever turned off in the pod, and opened one eye to see.  I learned that it hadn’t, and also that opening your eyes is a bad idea – it introduced a tiny bit of supersalinated water into the corner of my eye, which stings.  Luckily, it was only the tiniest amount, and although I could feel it, the sting wasn’t bad.

After that, I started to get a little too warm, the way I do when I wake up from a deep sleep and need to kick off the covers.  I still had no idea how long I’d been floating, and was still incredibly relaxed, but decidedly more awake.  I wished for a way to tweak the temperature down a degree or two, but not enough to get up.

It was only a few minutes later that the jets turned on, signaling the end of my time.  It had already been an hour!

Getting out was also strange, like rebooting my sensory system.  All my nerves were asleep, and everything felt somehow both groggy and hyper-aware and, well, a little stoned.  The air felt extra cold, and then almost too warm again.  I was aware of feeling all the textures – the floor, the towel, the water pressure in the shower.  I was awake, but still in slow motion.  By the time I had washed of the salt, dried, and dressed, I was feeling relaxed, but happy.  The tension in my neck was all gone.  My mind was quiet.  I realized that the dopey feeling was actually just a lack of mental tension.  There weren’t 200 things buzzing through my mind.  I felt rested, and calm, excited to go meet the family for lunch, but not worried or stressed, even though it was a little late.

It’s been a few hours now since I exited the tank.  I still feel pretty good.  Calm, happy, focused but unhurried.  It wasn’t the cosmic, out of body experience I’d hoped it might be, but it was just my first time, and I had some learning to do.  I think another time I might try with music, or my deep meditation oms.  I’d like to discover if there’s a way to decrease twitching so that my descent isn’t so frequently interrupted.  But oh, my, overall it was just lovely!  

PS I just realized that all the muscle soreness from this week’s gym time is gone --another apparently  fabulous side effect of my birthday float!

I Still Feel Happy

This week, Ellie soldiered through a typical springtime cold.  Her nose ran, then clogged, and at night she snored like a bulldog as she tried to draw breath through the wet paper straws that were her swollen sinuses.   Surprisingly, she maintained her usual, sunny disposition, rarely mentioning that she was sick, instead singing throughout the day as though nothing in the world was wrong.  

Tuesday evening I was lying in bed beside her, listening to her snort and gurgle as she tried to go to sleep.

    "How do you feel, Ellie?" I asked, feeling badly for all the effort it was taking her to breathe.  Her answer was not what I expected.

    "I still feel habby!" she said, snuggling into my shoulder.  She still felt happy.

Last year, I would have given almost anything to have been able to answer the way Ellie had.  Last year I felt like I was stuck at the bottom of a deep well looking up at the pinprick of bright sky where I once lived.  I could see it up there, that bright and happy land, but I couldn't reach it.  For the first time in my life, I felt utterly overwhelmed by everything; sad and exhausted and irritable.   It was effort to get out of bed, effort to deal with housework and kids, effort to teach and listen and mediate disputes, effort to find the smiles and laughs that should surround my family.  Effort.  But there, in the bottom of my well, the resevoir was dry. I had no energy left at all.

In bed at night I would be exhausted but I couldn't sleep. I was wracked with anxiety - something I'd never really experienced before.  I found myself worrying about everything: childhood disease, global climate change, finances, letting down the kids, letting down Paulo, never being able to find my way back to the happy place I'd always lived, natural disasters, fire, accidents, wars in foreign countries. Really. You name it, I'd worry about it.  And all the while I was mentally kicking myself for worrying about things I had no control over - why couldn't I just shut it off?  But the anxiety was like a runaway freight train.  Every night I was tied to the engine and no amount of rational thought could untie the knots.

My back was in a constant state of spasm, too, and several times I found myself in the urgent care office, so stiff I could hardly move.  I reasoned that the back pain was increasing my stress, and the stress tightening my back, and it seemed to be a vicious cycle I couldn't break.  My usual back doctor was trying, but to no avail.  I started spending time each night gently stretching, stretching, stretching and then meditating, trying to reduce the cramping and the pain in my body and my mind.  Still, the pain persisted and I learned to live with it, modifying the way I did everything from cooking to managing the kids in order to work around the stiffness and immobility. 

I didn't talk about it much.  After all, what was there to say?  I had a great life, a family I adored, enough to eat, a safe place to live, and I was miserable?  So I had a bad back.  Big deal.  Half the people I know have had bad backs and they didn't spiral into utter misery.  I had nothing to complain about and yet I felt terrible.  So, instead of complaining I tried to find help.  I went to the doctor and asked to have my hormone levels checked - maybe it was my thyroid, adrenal fatigue, menopause, or something physical that could be addressed. 

When all my bloodwork came back normal, I sought out a therapist.  Maybe I was depressed and need to talk to a professional.  I certainly couldn't go on living like this - I was becoming someone I didn't even recognize.   The therapist was sweet and tried diligently to find a way to help me feel better.  Finally, after seeing me for several months, she shrugged her shoulders and admitted that we'd hit a dead end. I wasn't suffering from childhood trauma. I was aggressively looking for solutions instead of allowing myself to be defeated. I had good coping mechanisms and a good support structure.  I had done everything she'd suggested and I still felt underwater. In essence, she was suggesting that I should rethink medication, but I wasn't interested.  I went home and cried some more.  I began to wonder if I was ever going to feel normal again.

Finally, in the summer, two things happened that would turn everything around.  The first was that Paulo got his sleep apnea addressed and stopped snoring.  For the first time in years, we would be able to sleep in the same room again.  I moved off the extra bed in Ellie's room and back into the big bed.  It was bliss, and just that simple change began to impact my night time anxiety.  I began to relax in the evening and to worry a little less.  

The second happened after three disastrous trips to the back doctor in a row.  All three times I had come home feeling better, only to seize up completely within 48 hours.  When I the doctor this, he decided to re-evaluate my back to see if there were any new areas that needed to be adressed. Sure enough, he found a second place that everyone had missed and began to work on it along with the usual place.  Suddenly, the pain lifted.  Completely lifted.  By the time I was standing in the waiting room paying my copay I felt like I hadn't felt in a year - completely pain-free.  

Being pain-free made me realize just how much pain I had actually been in all along.  It's absence was shocking. Amazing.  I couldn't believe it was true.  For the next week, I woke each morning expecting the pain to be back, but it wasn't.  I started sleeping better.  As the days ticked by and the seizing didn't happen, I found myself laughing again.  I stopped worrying and crying. I started dancing in the kitchen again, and singing in the car, and coming up with silly games to play with the kids.  For the first time in a year I was finally out of that deep hole and the sun on my face each morning felt like a wonderful, thrilling miracle.

I called my therapist, thanked her, and told her I wouldn't be needing her help anymore.  I called my back doctor and thanked him profusely - had had literally saved me.

It was eye-opening to discover that my whole life could be so crippled by this one problem.  Chronic pain had imprisoned me for a year and I'd suddenly, unexpectedly, been granted parole.  

It's been less than a year now since the pain lifted, and every day since has felt like a gift.  I haven't forgotten that miserable, lost, overwhelmed woman, nor how easy it was for me to tumble down that hole. And I'd be lying if I said I don't fear a return of that kind of pain.  I have a whole new appreciation for how debilitating it can be, and I think about the people I know with other chronic pain issues - fibromyalgia, sciatica, arthritis, and I marvel that they continue to smile and function when I could not. But with this perspective comes a gratitude for each day of freedom, no matter how hard life might be otherwise.  Every time I can play on the floor with my kids or let them climb into my lap and hang a hug around my neck without pain, every time I can lift that crockpot into the overhead cupboard by myself, or take out the trash, or climb out of bed without pain, or shampoo my hair without pain, or pick up Ellie and squeeze her tight without crying, I am grateful.  I know that the every day things in this life are full of gifts, and that I cannot afford to take them for granted.

I'm still tired, and busy, and sometimes sick or overwhelmed, but now it all rides on a sea of gratitude and relief.  It might have taken a lot of pain to get here, but now I can move through life's bumps with a smile again.  And if you were to ask, like Ellie, I could tell you without hesitation or reservation, I still feel happy.  

 

 

The Find It Game, Brought to You by the Makers of Autism

Like many families with small children, our house is in a semi-constant state of disarray.  Toys that belong in the basement have travelled to the kitchen and living room, and sometimes all the way up to the children's rooms.  Action figures crawl under couch cushions and beneath chairs, puzzle pieces fall into cracks beside walls and under dressers, and stuffed animals find their way behind beds and to the bottoms of toy chests.  Everything moves.  No matter how conscientious I try to be about clean up (or how lax, for that matter) everything moves. 

This is no doubt a common story, but our version takes an interesting twist thanks to the "Find It Game," brought to us by the makers of Autism.  Once a day or so, Ellie will think of a toy - a little animal, an action figure, a stuffed animal, a puzzle - and absolutely has to have that object right now. Something has reminded her of it, and she can see this item clearly in her mind and she simply must have it back.  Now.  Right NOW!!

When she was a little younger this was especially challenging, as she lacked the verbal skills to comunicate her distress to us.  She might have choked out "BLUE!" between sobs, but it was left to us to decipher what that meant.  Was she doing a puzzle and missing a blue piece?  Was it a blue parakeet from the animal bin?  A blue whale toy? Blue from Blue's Clues? And while we tried to figure it out she would wail and wail, inconsolable, hysterical, missing so desperately the thing we couldn't understand or find.  The Find It Game was frustrating for all when the lost object couldn't even be identified, and it was a game we lost A LOT.

Luckily, at this point she has enough language to help one of us to understand what it is she is looking for most of the time.  But when we do understand, there is still the hurdle of finding the missing item --something that could have been missing for a few minutes or several months when it was called to mind and suddenly needed.  And when the call comes, when Ellie has decided that something is missing, we are all on the hunt.  Sure, we could try to talk her down, beg her to patient, ask her where she left it, but she will not answer, and she will not be distracted.  She is fixated. She will not stop thinking about that thing, missing that thing, crying about that thing for a long, long time if it is not located.  She will drip snot and tears and sadness all around the house, her cries a rising crescendo of misery and loss until we all think we will lose our minds.  It's a painful and prolonged process and, at this point, one we all try to avoid.

So instead, the first one to understand what is missing usually puts out the family-wide APB, like today's:  

Alert! Alert!  Small green Yoshi has gone missing, has anyone seen it?  (everyone stops what they're doing to respond)

I saw it yesterday in the basement, but it's not there now!  

Lexi, have you checked the super hero bucket?

It's not there, Mom!

Spencer, is Yoshi with your LEGOs?

No, Ellie had it at the computer earlier today!

Lexi, you check the playroom floor, I'm going to look under the beds.  Spencer - you check under the couch cushions!

And so it goes until either the item is found or we all give it up as lost.  Meanwhile, the searchers are serenaded by the howls of the little one, still crying for the lost toy she just remembered.  Thanks to this marvelous game, I have learned to take little mental snapshots of things as I move through the house:  3 elephants on the windowsill in Lexi's room, SNAP! A favorite book spied behind the edge of the bed, SNAP! A superhero sitting in the soapdish upstairs, SNAP! Several Angry Birds figures on the basement coffee table, SNAP! 2 LEGO figures battling in the bookcase, SNAP!  Sometimes shuffling through these pictures can save me ten or fifteen minutes of crying and searching in the day.  And sometimes nothing helps.

Today, Yoshi was found.  He'd been kicked under the couch and was communing with a group of dust bunnies and two lost M&Ms.  Like the Prodigal Son, his return was met with much rejoicing, singing, and joy.  He was treated to a flying run around the house in the hot little fist of his greatest fan, laughing through the end of her tears.  Tomorrow we may not be so lucky:  tomorrow it could be a dinosaur Odin has chewed and distroyed, or a puzzle piece that won't be found until they cart us off to the nursing home and clear out the house, or a superhero that is half-buried in the dirt in the play yard not to be discovered for another week, if ever.  

But today, we won the Find It Game.  Today we won, and since it's the little things that make or break our days around here, I'll take this little victory and cheer...  

Today we dance, for Yoshi is back!  

Just Breathe

 

Bones and dirt.  Whatever happens before or after that, there is this one certainty.  At some point, as abruptly as being born, we die.  When I find myself looking at old photographs or reading histories, passing old houses or listening to stories, I can't help but think of those whose days have passed and how little we know of their lives.  The bare facts tell so little.  A photograph of my face 100 years from now will be virtually meaningless.  The fact of my bones would tell little.  An archeologist could tell you my age and sex, that I had a bad back, perhaps, and bore children, or that I once broke my elbow as a child. She couldn't know that when that elbow broke I lost my grandfather. That I missed his funeral, or that my mother was nursing me back to health and mourning her father at the same time, torn between her roles as mother and daughter, the injured and the healer.  Even our histories tell so little, leaving us strangers to each other, free to romantisize and glorify, or critisize and dismiss.  

I stare at dark-eyed photographs of long-gone ancestors and wonder what they saw in those moments, what they heard and tasted and felt.  Their days so immediate and concrete, and yet so fleeting.  As mine.  And in the wondering I am brought into my own present and my own skin.  I sat recently on a plane and looked at the faces around me.  I saw them clearly and crisply, reading, sleeping, talking, waiting, the details of their rumpled clothing, tired eyes, faces smiling and frowning, friendly and distant.  Yet I knew that we wouldn't remember each other the next day, as though none of us were really there, together in those minutes.  

So I try harder to be present and to remember my own story. I lie quietly next to my children and I try to memorize the sounds of their young voices, the smell of their hair, the little words they mispronounce. "Ek-si-mo kisses, Mommy!" Ellie cries, and presses her soft, sweet nose against mine.  I try to slow down and really listen to Lexi's stories, and to play Spencer's games. I try to remember to put aside my busyness and pay attention more.  To sit on the floor.  To read books aloud.  To ask more questions. I hold them a little too tight sometimes, aware of how briefly they will fit in my arms just so.  I listen to them laughing with Paulo, the rise and fall of his big voice and the squealing trill of theirs overlapping and I soak it in to fill my mind with those sounds when the house is empty again.  I watch the way his lip juts out just so as he reads and memorize the angles, the posture.  There is such beauty in the details.

And I take a few minutes every day just to feel my bones as they are now.  Deep breaths.  Just this moment and no others.  A minute alone on the end of the dock, feeling as much as I can feel: the breeze pushing stray hairs across my face, the dull ache that always sits between my shoulderblades, the pressure of my feet on the cool grooves of the dock, the damp smells of water and wet earth, the cooling breeze on my skin, a mosquito biting my ankle, the sounds of birds and lapping water, voices from across the lake, laughing or crying or talking, the distant hum of a plane, the riotous colors of the sky reflected int he water.  I do not rate them, the breeze no more or less important than the mosquito. For now, it is enough to feel them. These are my moments on earth.  They are few and precious.  I pause and remind myself:  just breathe.  I will myself to own this, my own experience, before it is time to be bones and dirt.

Full Circle

Last summer, our neighbor found and brought to us three fat, black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars that were enthusiastically eating the carrot greens in her garden.  While they ate everything we offered and shortly encased themselves in three, perfect cocoons, what followed was a gruesome and unlikely learning experience which left us hoping against hope that we might still hatch a butterfly in the spring.

Ignored in their windowsill home for the long winter months, once the days started to get warmer and the first flowers of spring started to bloom, the kids' attention returned to the remaining chrysalises. Would we have a butterfly soon?  Was there a chance there was a survivor?  We carefully opened the butterfly house and removed the branches to examine the well-camouflaged cocoons, and when we did, we discovered something encouraging:  only one of the three cocoons had been breached!  The nasty carnivorous flies had only invaded one of our caterpillars! We might still have two butterflies in stasis.  

We rushed back to the internet to see if we could determine when we might expect them to emerge, only to face more discouragement.  Apparently, wintering chrysalises in stasis was trickier than just letting them stay unmolested inside.  They might have been better off in the cold garage, or being misted occasionally inside the refridgerator.  In fact, the artificial light and heat in the dining room might have dehydrated them beyond repair.  And truthfully, they looked a little dry compared to the pictures we saw online of healthy cocoons.

Sad, but unwilling to give up, Spencer insisted that we keep them "just in case," and I couldn't say no. So we transferred the branches to a large, open-mouthed jar, loosely covered the top with a butterfly net, and left it in the window.  Of course, the net was removed several times by one or another curious kid and, rather convinced that there was no life within, I was less-than-conscientious about re-covering the jar.

This week, as the weather settled into the most perfect string of spring days - warm, sunny, dry and breezy - all three kids (and their mother) came down with a head cold that meant business.  Yellow snot began dripping, running, and spraying everywhere, and voices grew whiny, scratchy, and irritable. School came to a full halt for everyone, replaced with countless lessons in better nose-blowing techniques (use a tissue PLEASE, Ellie!) and appropriate tissue disposal (not in a pile on the couch, not scattered on the floor, not piled on the table beside you etc...)  The TV got a work-out as the older two sprawled in front of it's flickering face, covered in blankets, flanked by boxes of Puffs Plus and stuffed animals.  And Ellie, never content to be still even when sick, patrolled the different rooms lugging books, crayons, animals, her iPad, and anything else that caught her eye.

So it was that this afternoon found her camped out in the diningroom, drawing on the whiteboard and reading an assortment of transported books while Spencer and I watched Rango on Netflix. Suddenly, she stopped singing and called out "It's a BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY!  It's a BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY!"  Unsure whether she was reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" or looking out the window, I came in to investigate.  

"Where is the butterfly, Ellie?  Show Mommy."

"Right THERE!"  she said with glee, pointing at the front window.  

It only took a second to realize that she wasn't looking at a butterfly outside, but one right there on the inside of the glass.  While no one was looking, one gorgeous black swallowtail butterfly had emerged from its cocoon and was fluttering drying wings against the glass.  

The picture can't do justice to the deep, velvety color of his wings.

The empty cocoon

In moments everyone was crowded around the window as I tried to coax it away from the window and into something we could use to bring it safely outside.  Little fingers had to be reminded again and again not to touch the fragile legs and beautiful wings, all while ooohing and aahing over his velvety colors and perfectly curled proboscis.  There was much joy at the realization that Daddy was working from home, and with a little patience on their part, he could partake in the release.

Even his body was pretty, lined with bright, white spots
 

Soon we were bringing him to the back porch and bidding him a fond farewell.  In spite of the long, strange winter, the confusion of the window and the glass, he quickly fluttered his perfect wings and soared into the sky.  In moments he had reachd the roof of the house, the tops of the trees, and then open sky for the first time.  It was an amazing and beautiful thing. 

He was out of the bowl before I could even snap a picture.

 

That bird-like shape is actually our butterfly!

higher...

and away he goes! 

We actually got our own little miracle today.  And who knows?  Maybe we will have the pleasure of releasing a second butterfly soon...

 

Letting Go

In September our neighbor brought us three caterpillars.  They were beautiful, fat things, with bright stripes and hungry mouths.  With great excitement, the children and I pulled out the little butterfly house and made them a home.  We stocked their new home with carrot greens (their favorite) and collected sticks to climb and build cocoons on.  We learned that they were black swallowtails and what they would look like when they emerged in the spring. We thought we knew what to expect.

So we were not surprised when they climbed high and spun perfect, camouflaged cocoons on their branches. We checked this stage off our list.

But expectation can be a dangerous thing.  

A few weeks later, Lexi noticed two flies inside the butterfly house.  Sealed inside, it was clear that they had not snuck into the butterfly sanctuary overnight. We had some more reading to do.  Suddenly, instead of learning about the life of butterflies-to-be, we were learning about these parasitic flies and how they came to be. In fact, they had been there all the time, silently, invisibly incubating inside their caterpillar hosts.  After eating all but the heads of our caterpillar friends, they emerged, leaving behind hollow cocoons.  There were great, fat, disappointed tears on Lexi's cheeks as reality dawned.  Instead of lovely, delicate butterflies, we had raised two carnivorous flies.  Not the lesson we had expected.

Life is messy.  Maybe it is our need for order and predicability that allows us to pretend otherwise, again and again:  to pretend that we have some control over our corner of this vast, uncontrollable universe.  I am no different.  I want to make sense and order out of chaos.  Something I can wrap my head around and hold indefinitely. Against all evidence to the contrary, my mind still craves some illusion of control.

It is this desire I struggle with the most.  If peace comes in the absence of desire, it is this singluar desire that stands most formidably in my way.  Uncertainty was so much easier to bear, somehow, when I wasn't responsible for other little humans.  If life's curves hit me alone it was acceptable.  I knew I could withstand my own heartache, injury, fear, illness.  But the saying is true:  once you have children your heart stands up and walks outside your body. And suddenly the uncertainties are so much weightier.  

I want to enclose them in my arms and hands and keep them safe.  I want to defy the chaos for them. I want to build a barrier around each of them studded with hope and prayer and love that can somehow repel unexpected dangers and protect them from harm.  As though some how any of us can move through this life without hardship and obstacles. As if growth happens without adversity. And yet I still want this for them: to control the uncontrollable.

When the October snowstorm hit this year, I sent them to bed with misgivings.  Upstairs seemed so vulnerable when the trees around us were bowing low to the storm, bending, and breaking.  We moved them to the front of the house at first.  And then, at midnight when the big oak in the back yard let go, we moved them into the basement.  They slept peacefully, and woke with surprise to find themselves relocated and the world around them whitewashed with snow and rumbling with the sounds of the generator.  Paulo and I slept fitfully, him with an ear to the door, me with an ear to the dull thuds and reverberations of trees still being crippled in the snow.  I wrapped my arms around Ellie's warm little body, listened, and tried to let go.

This is all we can do, really.  Love and let go. The love part comes easy.  It ambushes me from the crook of a little arm, from the space between small teeth, from behind twinkling brown eyes, from the booming laugh of the man who carries this with me, taking my breath away.  But each day I have to remind myself to find ways to let go.  To do what I can to tame the chaos, and then to accept the rest. To see each moment as it is, instead of what I expect it to be.  To be in this present moment instead of straining so hard to see and shape the next.

The sun over the frost is beautiful this morning.  It's casting small, straight rainbows through the beveled glass onto the dining room wall for the children to catch.  We are warm and everyone is well. Our bellies are full and the house smells of fresh coffee and clean laundry. The kids are laughing together over Legos and later family will come to eat with us.

Maybe next week someone will come to remove the rest of the debris from the storm and the fear that knotted in my stomach that night will be just another story to tell.  And in the spring we might still see a black swallowtail butterfly. After all, one cocoon remains unscathed and inside we can hope, maybe even expect, a butterfly is forming.   

Rodent Revenge: Defiant Team Mice Members Under Investigation for Vandalism

In retaliation for last night's losses, one (or more) Mice Team player(s), yet-to be identified, has turned to vandalism to express their outrage.  Although the details are still under investigation, it appears that anger and frustration led one or more individuals to tear one of the offending traps appart from the outside with their bare teeth, an act that left one door off it's pivot and caused irreparable damage to the side of the Crazy Lady's equipment. Not content with simple destruction, the suspect or suspects then deficated all over the crime scene to express their displeasure (see exhibits 1 and 2).

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

When asked to comment on the incident, Coach Whiskers insisted he had not condoned the act, which he termed "damaging to our image as a team," and that he was unsure at this time who was to blame.  "I can't comment on whether or not the Crazy Lady had it coming to her, but I will say that most of our players are good, decent rodents, dedicated to beating the humans fairly and, you know, eating as much as possible.  This is a stain on our good name.  Not to mention the garage counter tops."

As for the impact on the Crazy Lady team?  Well, after laughing hysterically, crying for a moment, and doing a strange, shuffling little jig, the Crazy Lady spokeswoman responded to questioning with a crazy smile and shrugged. Our best guess is that this act can mean only one thing... 

 

The Score: Mice 2, Crazy Lady 0

As expected, we eagerly poked our little heads out to the garage to check the bucket this morning for trapped mice. Nothing.  Ah, it's just that they were still full, we reasoned, and maybe the lingering smell of bleach where I had cleaned out the bucket before hatching my dastardly plan had deterred them.  We would wait.

But every time we passed through the garage today, we had to check again.  

Finally, on my last trip through I decided to go closer to inspect the bucket.  Were those...could they be?? Were there sunflower seed shells on the cover?  Impossible!  But no, there they were, scattered about like little bits of victory confetti.  I peeked through the hole and sure enough, there were seed shells inside, too.  And just in case there was any doubt about who left them there, our little rodent friends left us a message that we couldn't possibly misunderstand:

Yes.  That's poop alright.

I have seen rats jump, and squirrels, too, and they are impressive.  But this blew my mind.  Somehow, the little buggers managed to jump back up from the bottom of the bucket and out the hole in the top. Repeatedly.  I honestly wish we had a motion-activated camera so that I could see how the hell they did this!

Seriously.  A mouse is LITTLE, and this bucket is pretty tall.  We might have magical flying  mice.

Yes, I know that they're laughing at me.  Crazy lady thought she could trap us in a plain ol' bucket! What a loon!  And although they could not break into the big red cooler to raid the rest of the seed, they made sure they let me know how they felt about that cooler, too:

Subtle.

See how it is?  They have gotten so bold, so brazen as to mock me in my own garage. You know what this mean, of course.  It is ON, mice.  You and your poop are moving out.  I may not be able to kill you (due to previous agreements pinky-promised to the small humans) but you will be moving far away to the wilds of the country where the cats and owls prowl free.  

Just as soon as I get the kids all well and make it to the hardware store for some real fancy mouse-catchin' traps and bait and set all the traps in key locations in the garage....  

Ok, you're right.  This might take a while.  No wild parties, though, and ABSOLUTELY NO breaking and entering.  Trespassers will be killed in whatever messy and nasty way works best, pinky-promise or not. You have been warned.

 

Building a Better Mouse Trap: Let them build it themselves!

Apparently, we have a rodent problem.  I know, that sounds bad, but it's not terrible.  Yet.  Terrible is when they break into your house and start rodent races through the walls all night and pee all through your insulation.  That is not the kind of problem we have, but I don't want to tempt fate.

You see, the children (and the adults) around here have fallen in love with feeding the birds.  Three years after setting up our awesome squirrel-proof bird feeder, we are entertained year-round by birds:  red-bellied woodpeckers, cardinals, orioles, gold and purple finches, eastern bluebirds, rose-breasted grosbeaks, nuthatches and chickadees and dark-eyed juncos, just to name a few.  And feeding these ravenous hoards requires keeping a stash of thistle seeds, black oil sunflower seeds, and suet.  

Until this year, our system has worked flawlessly.  20lbs bags of seed get stored in our big picnic cooler while a smaller, covered tupperware container holds a portable amount of seed and a scoop.  All of this has a home in our garage as we are pressed for space inside and didn't want to take a chance with the kids getting into it and spreading seeds all over the house.  Anyway, it worked.  While chipmunks scurried through the garage from front yard to back yard every year, the seed went unmolested.

But something was about to change all that:  mice.  Last weekend I decided to try to start up our mosquito magnet.  When I opened the Mosquito Magnet Supply Drawer in the garage (those things work but they are more high-maintenance than a tempermental high school girlfriend) I discovered that something had chewed holes in the bags and left tiny little rodent droppings in the drawer.  Lovely. Made a mental note to wash my hands twice and clean out the turds. 

Then, two nights ago I opened the back door to close the garage before bed, just in time to see a tiny white (white??) rodent scurry across the top of the door track and disappear into the overhead shelves.  A field mouse.  Having encountered plenty of them while living in Kentucky there was no doubt in m mind. The garage had mice.

This afternoon as I headed out to take the Subaru for an oil change I discovered the worst evidence yet:  tiny blue plastic shavings littered the walkway near the seed shelves.  Blue plastic shavings that were an exact match for the cover of the portable seed container's cover.  Sure enough, the little stinkers had chewed off the handle on the top and then, once they could get their teeth in it, they had methodically chewed a mouse-sized hole in the top and climbed in to gorge themselves.  Nice.

Annoyed, I transferred all the seed to new containers and put ALL the containers inside the big cooler.  I vacuumed up the mess and threw out the chewed top.  Threw it out, that was, until I got a fiendish thought.  The mice had been able to get in and out easily when the container was full of seed, but what if it was almost empty?  It's tall, and smooth-sided...they could get in, but could they get back out?

There's only one way to find out.  Feeling slightly evil, I spread the bottom with their favorite selection of seeds, and replaced the cover.  I put the container in what I hope is and easy-to-reach spot not far from the drawer full of mice turds.  And now we wait.  Of course, with three animal-loving tykes in the house there's no way we're going to kill any mice we catch, but they will get relocated far away from here to some cozy wooded area to live out the rest of their days with the owls.  

I don't know.  They're clever, and tomorrow and the next day we'll probably wake disappointed to find an empty bucket with a sprinkling of seeds.  Or, we may find evidence of a super mouse:  one who somehow managed to defy gravity to steal seeds without getting caught.  But I can't help but hope that maybe, just maybe, they'll climb in and get stuck.  How sweet it would be to evict them all, one at a time, each caught in a trap they built with their own teeth.

Autism Awareness, Part Four: Dr. Martha Herbert on Autism, Genetics, and Environmental Toxicity

The following is the concluding segment from a lecture Dr. Herbert gave at a conference in Maine.  Her lecture, entitled "Genes and Environment, Developmental and Chronic:  An Inclusive Approach to Autism Science" was eye-opening to say the least, and is well-worth watching for anyone interested in the inter-connectivity of autism, genetics, and environmental toxicity.  Her closing should be a call to awareness and action for all of us:

 

Will Women Lead the Environmental Health Movement?

How can we imagine that ordinary people might be able successfully to challenge the overwhelming internal logic of the global economic system because of concern over environmental health?

 There is an Ethiopian proverb that when spider webs unite they can tie up a lion.  The lion of the globally destructive patterns of production and consumption may one day be ensnared and ultimately domesticated by the gossamer webs of human consciousness and community action.  What will happen when ordinary people, whose lives are often mortally wounded by the destruction of the biosphere, come to understand that their wounds are so often intimately related to the wounds of the earth?

 What will happen when a working woman comes to the realization that her own breast cancer, her husband's lymphoma, her brother's melanoma, her son's learning disability, his best friend's attention deficit disorder, her daughter's endometriosis, her niece's cleft palate, her cousin's chronic anxiety and panic disorder, her best friend's severe chemical sensitivity, her best friend's daughter's asthma, her uncle's infertility, her neighbor's son's testicular cancer, and her sister's daughter's childhood leukemia may form a pattern?

What will happen when this working woman begins to understand that these new human pandemics that effect her community and her family directly may be profoundly connected to what is happening to the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and the animals of the earth?  I believe this working woman will understand that the cancers and infertilities of the fish, the disappearance of the frogs, the cleft palates of the mice, the shifts in gender orientations of the birds, the susceptibility to viruses and infections of the seals, the disappearance of the song birds--that all of this and much, much more may be telling us a story that is also our story.  

 The story that the birds and the fish and the mice are telling us is the story of inter-being;  the story that all life and earth is truly, breath-takingly, concretely connected right now, and that what we do to the mice of the field, and the birds of the sky, and the creatures of the forrest is also, ultimately, what we do to ourselves and to our families right now.  

 I do not believe that we can hide from this story much longer.  It is one of the great stories of our time.  The very human protest against the massive, entrenched, and toxic system of global production and consumption may seem unrealistic economically and politically, but is it any less realistic than the Quaker protests in Europe and the United States that played such a key role in ending the 350 year-old slave trade?  I do not invoke the parallel to ending the slave trade lightly, for we are as enchained by toxic chemicals, and by ozone depletion, by climate change and the destruction of nature as we once were enchained by slavery.  I believe that environmental health may be one of the greatest human rights issues of the new millennium, and thus our biggest challenge.

 

(Please forgive any slight discrepancies in my transcription - I did my best but I'm no professional!)